Happy Chef**
Happy Chef is a chef service app based in the Bay Area where they provide restaurant-style meals and special occasion services all in the comfort of your own home.
Overview
The Goal
Stakeholders wanted to gain a deeper understanding of the motivation of potential new users about what they thought of the affordable chef service app. They also wanted to see how these users would interact with their app.
Team/Role:
Lead Researcher, a team of one
Project Timeline: Feb 22, 2021-March 18, 2021
Steps:
Screening Questionnaire, Recruiting, Moderating Interviews, Data Analysis & Synthesis, Pitch Deck Presentation
Data Collection
Primary Research
Semi Structure, In-Depth Interviews (remote) with a total of 9 participants
Outcome
I was able to provide the stakeholders with key insights and recommendations. Some of these insights were:
Covid-19 Safety
Participants said they would prefer chefs if they followed CDC Guidelines – vaccination preferred but not necessary.
Overall, people enjoyed the concept and style of the Happy Chef app due to its ease of usability.
However, 5 out of the 9 participants had an issue with logging in.
Recommendations
Fixing parts of the Happy Chef app
Emphasizing more on special occasions
Participants saw that they would use this app during special occasions than a meal prep
Feature more Chef’s profiles
Participants wanted to learn more about the chefs and their cooking styles versus just looking at only food pictures
Feature reviews and ratings
The app did not have this feature yet and participants saw those features as essential
Reflection - Lessons Learned
1. Be Ready for Anything
This statement can hold true for any type of project you do. I was thrown some curveballs along the way from not having enough participants, being sick before doing the interviews, to having the same person be a no-show twice. This was one of my very first projects, so I did not want to disappoint. Everything ended up working out.
2. Recruiting can be easy if you know the right tools
As stated earlier, one of my very first projects. Even though recruiting did not take long, I did not know the different tools out there for easily accessible audience panels, especially for a topic like this.
3. No Shows
I had my first no-show who didn’t show up twice! I emailed him the first time within the first 5 mins of when the interview was being held. After that, I followed up with him to ask if he wanted to reschedule and he kindly agreed. When he didn’t show up the second time, I informed the stakeholder and he agreed we can finish up the study with only 9 participants. From this experience, I developed my own protocols when it comes to no-shows that I still use to this day.
Aftermath
I was able to do another project months later with this company. They took the recommendations I provided and proceeded with the necessary changes. It was exciting to see their mock-up and how they incorporated the feedback to have a better website and better app.
I ended up doing a continuation of this research (July 2021) that focused on how new users interact with the new UI/UX beta web page, to find out users’ preferences with chef’s cooking in the home or outside of the home, and to validate previous research.
Outcome #2
6/6 participants found the UI/UX page easy to navigate
5/6 participants would sign up for a waiting list if Happy Chef was in their city
For special events – 6/6 participants would prefer the chef to cook in their home. If weekly meals, 3/6 would prefer the chef to cook the meals beforehand.
Rates that participants would pay:
Weekly Meals - $40-50/hr for meal prep time
Special Events - $100 pp
Recommendations for Project 2
Having a robust FAQ
Participants wanted to learn more about their app and were trying to find the FAQ section that was sparse
More marketing efforts meaning more promotions, so new users know what Happy Chef is and how accessible it can be
Add a tipping section in the app
Even though the app promotes fair wages for chefs, participants thought it would be nice to have a tipping feature
A/B Testing of the web/app designs
Having chefs create a kid-friendly menu
Something that was discovered and should be further explored because busy mothers were one of their personas
** name changed due to NDA reasons